The human spinal column is composed of bone vertebrae which support the upper body. Around and attached to the vertebrae are, among other things, various muscles which act on the vertebrae to affect movement of the upper body. While a vast majority of the population has a normally shaped spinal column, a portion of the population suffers from an abnormal curvature of the spinal column known as scoliosis.
Scoliosis is treated by fusing various vertebrae together along the curvature to straighten the spine column. During a fusion procedure, the surgeon first retracts the soft tissue connected to the vertebrae to be fused, and thereafter removes certain of the processes (bone projections) from the vertebrae. The vertebrae are then aligned to straighten the spinal column, and stabilized relative to one another by a steel rod which is attached to the vertebrae by numerous fastening techniques. The surgeon then places bone graphs across the exposed surfaces of adjoining vertebrae and restores the location of the soft tissue to cover the bone graphs and vertebrae. The graphs regenerate, grow into bone and fuse the vertebrae together, with the rod functioning as a temporary splint which stabilizes the spinal column while the bone fuses together over a period of months.
Fusion procedures to treat scoliosis generally take many hours. In some cases, the entire length of the spinal column is substantially exposed and the surgical procedure may take eight hours or more. Consequently, blood loss during the procedure can be significant. A great amount of this blood loss occurs when the soft tissue is removed from the vertebrae, generally with a device that scrapes along the hard vertebrae surface and simultaneously strips the soft tissue from the vertebrae. Generally the soft tissue is first removed from the vertebrae with a first handheld non-powered instrument, and then the separated tissue is treated to reduce blood loss with a second instrument, typically an electrosurgical monopolar (Bovie) pencil. What is needed is a single surgical instrument which reduces the need to switch between different instruments, and offers the surgeon the ability to treat tissue against blood loss simultaneously with the separation of soft tissue from bone, resulting in reduced surgical time.